A NATION CHALLENGED: THE CLASSES

A NATION CHALLENGED: THE CLASSES; Pakistan Is 2 Worlds: One Urbane, One Enraged

By RICK BRAGG

Published: October 1, 2001

KARACHI, Pakistan, Sept. 30—
Arif Ali Khan Abbasi, educated at Oxford, retired head of Pakistan International Airlines, recently went to a mosque in Karachi to kneel for noon prayer.

He chose a mosque favored by more hard-line Islamic fundamentalists in the Gulshan-E-Iqbal section of Karachi, and as he knelt he felt the eyes of the bearded faithful bore into him. ''Because I was clean-shaven,'' he said. That offends them.

''Why did you come here,'' one man asked him.

''To pray,'' he said. He listened to the mullah's words, as much song as sermon, and was not insulted or abused in any way, as he prayed. But when he was done, he was approached by several men who told him, politely: ''O.K., you have prayed. Now please leave.''

Mr. Abbasi, who is so respected in business circles here that employees at Pakistan International Airlines wept when he retired, is not accustomed to being told to leave anything until he is ready to go, and then people hold the door for him.

But now, he said, he is a target of resentment that has more to do with unbending religious doctrine than with class.

It was one more sign of the divide between this city's -- and this country's -- business and upper classes, and the swelling numbers of Islamic militants.

It does not make him angry or frightened so much as it makes him sad.

Pakistan's upper classes are not afraid -- at least not yet -- that an attack by the United States on neighboring Afghanistan will lead to such anger and violence here that the very society will suddenly crumble and be replaced overnight by a Taliban-like leadership.

Mr. Abbasi told his story of the confrontation at the mosque at a recent dinner party in a prosperous Karachi neighborhood, a party that could have existed anywhere else in the world. Doctors stood elbow to elbow with business leaders, talking politics, some of them holding drinks of whiskey -- taboo in Islam. One of the signs of wealth here, say people with a wink, is knowing a good bootlegger. They spoke in English, not Urdu.

''We are bloody worried,'' said Habibur Rahman, a business management consultant.

''No one really knows the future,'' he added. There may be riots, there may be killing, but in Karachi and in Pakistan as a whole, he said, there is a great difference between talking about holy war and actually commiting it to the degree that it could tip a society.

In Pakistan, said the city's economic and professional elite, there is a silent majority made up of people who only want to work and live decently and have their children educated -- but who will talk about defending Afghanistan and attacking outsiders because of a fealty to Islam.

''That is what Musharraf is counting on,'' said Kamal Majidulla, editor of the Dawn Group of Newspapers.

Unlike most places in Karachi, where anti-American sentiment seems to be everywhere, there is little badmouthing of the United States in this spacious home, over trays of Pakistani delicacies. One man proudly says he has visited 27 American states.

A woman says she loves New York, and was there when the attack came and it broke her heart.

Outside these walls, Karachi, with 12 million people, has been tugged at from both sides.

Residents have marched to protest the government's support of the United States. Others marched in support of it -- and 11 people were injured by homemade grenades. ''Firecrackers,'' said one woman, dismissively.

For the upper classes, it is Pakistan's two million refugees from Afghanistan who have done most to destabilize the country. ''They have no choice but to get drunk on bigoted religion,'' said Mr. Abassi. They have little work, and little educational opportunities.

There are whole generations of Afghans living in Karachi who have never known anything except war. Mr. Majidullah described carpet shops where small boys who used to weave scenes of intricate detail, of princesses, camels and elephants, now weave rugs depicting AK-47 assault rifles and tanks.

He suggested that America drop money rather than bombs on Afghanistan. Invest in the country, he continued, with schools and businesses and social programs, and give the people there less reason to hate.

It is advice that Mr. Abbasi and others say is the key to stability in their own country to keep Islamic militants in check.

''I think Pakistan is going to have some luck, and we have not had luck for 50 years,'' Mr. Abbasi said.

Photos: Nanni Rahman, left, and Saleem Majidulla, who belong to Pakistan's upper class, discussing the country's situation. The vast numbers of poor are more militantly religious and more sympathetic to the Taliban.; Members of Pakistan's elite at a cocktail party where the talk was about the country's political predicament in the war against terrorism. The government must straddle the roles America's ally and Afghanistan's friend. (Photographs by LynseyAddario/Saba, for The New York Times)(pg. B4)